W3J Possible Upgrades

I recently got extra cash, and I decided to upgrade or add things to my W3J, what are possible upgrades for the W3J after purchase.

I have already added an extra stick of RAM totaling to 2GB DDR2 so far.

I was thinking of making use of the expresscard, but I am not sure what are available for now.

I was looking for a soundcard that goes into the expresscard slot, but I did not find anything that is out for purchase at this point in time. I saw the X-FI in a thread here, just don't know when it's coming out.

The reason, I wanted to add a sound card, is that there is this chirp or noisy screech when connected to external speakers. I read that it may be because of all the things inside my notebook, and that a external sound card should fix the problem. Is there any other solution, is does not happen with headphones.

Anything useful, that the expresscard slot can do to help improve performance?

I was also reading a tutorial in this forum about upgrading the HDD in the W3J, interesting and seems simple, I was also thinking on upgrading my HDD for more storage and with 7200RPM. It said it needs to be a PATA, but I can't find PATA notebook drives on newegg.

Can anyone point me out to major retailers that sell these kinds of drives, so I may purchase and upgrade my notebook's HDD.

Newegg, zipzoomfly, tigerdirect..etc.?

Is there anything else I can do to my marverlous W3J.

Boot time, I just wish it could be faster, the time it takes for it the W3J to load Windows, is long compared to my desktop. Startup and performance is fast, just the loading of windows (from the Asus logo, to me seeing the windows loading bar to the vista orb. about 30 seconds).

Is there any other upgrades I can do?

I don't want a processor change, as I am fine with mines. I am fine with the video card.

 

i upgraded my HDD to 7200 RPM and notice my WEP going up 5.1 from 4.5. so thats a pretty good improvement for me. i also changed my wireless lan card to intel AGN as i need the speed for networking.

 

PATA is also 6-IDE if I recall. There are only two main types of mobile 2.5" HD, S-ATA and IDE(PATA).

 

Nice sig lol.

Where did you buy your HDD, (if online, link would be awesome).

How do you change your wireless lan card to intel AGN? If you could tell that would also be awesome, I might do those two things, or more.

Update: for Notebook hard drives i only see on newegg these interfaces:

ATA-6 (33)
SATA 3.0Gb/s (3)
Serial ATA150

link: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Drives

 

These are the HDD's you should look at for your W3. The options for 7200 drives in the ATA interface are somewhat slim, and it's going to warm your system up (so be prepared for it).

Use Hibernate instead of shutdown & cold start - your total bootup time should then be <30 sec from button push -> ready to go.

 

Thanks for clarifying this.

I was about to say that I did not see the hibernate option, but I had to renable it from cmd prompt manually.

Anyways, is there a way to change what the power button on the W3J does when the computer is on. Before in XP, I used to disable it (as one of my friend just pressed it when I was gaming), and my pc shut down. I just want it to do nothing, as right now in vista it goes to sleep.

I tried hibernate, it takes about 30 secs to wake up. Nice feature, but what happens if the notebook power runs out while hibernating?

 

You can get the bluetooth remote by Interlink Electronics. It is really useful when watching a movie or listening music or for powerpoint slideshows

 

Hibernate isn't like standby, when the system needs to keep the RAM powered up for the data to stay intact. The notebook totally shuts down when hibernating - it first writes all the system info onto the HDD and turns itself off. When the power button is pressed, the BIOS checks the hibernate file first to see whether there is anything present and boots from that file if found. You don't use any power at all when hibernating, that's the beauty of it - fast bootup and the computer is off in between .

 

For some reason when I hibernate, I lose sound when I boot up. Hmm.

 

Which hard drive would you recommend?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822146052

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822146230

or any other 100GB 7200RPM drive for my W3J.

and why...

 

I prefer the Seagate to the Hitachi... but this is just a subjective preference I guess. I really think that both are as good.

I have 3 160 GB 5400 rpm HDDs, 2 of them are Seagates, and the other one is Hitachi. The Hitachi sounds louder than the Seagates. So I prefer Seagates because it's quieter. That's for the why part.

 

From my experience I agree, the Seagates have been better.

 

I would get the seagate. I got one and it's much better than my Hitachi Travelstar, you can't hear it at all not even when it's working full blast.

 

thanks to everyone who responded, it seems Seagate bette products (or quieter) than Hitachi.

 

My 5400.3 also draws less power and heats up less than equivalent Hitachis... So it's not just noise

 

I found this as well. I have a 7200 rpm 100 gig seagate and a 80 gig 5400 rpm hitachi. The seagate (even though faster) ran cooler than the hitachi.